Mets Birthday Cake

It's been pretty hard for me to do any sort of baking outside class. When it comes to my free time, baking is low on the priority list after about 15-20 hours of class time a week. Last week, I had a friend's birthday party and knew I wanted to make a cake. I allotted myself 5 hours over 3 days to get it done. I must be getting better with sticking to a schedule because that's about all it took.

My friend Jeremy is a huge Mets fan (the type that goes down to watch them during Spring training), so I knew it had to be a Mets cake. I baked a vanilla bean cake on Wednesday and stored it in the freezer for the weekend. On Friday, I frosted the cake and started on the logo, which I made out of fondant. I ran out of powdered sugar, so I saved all the royal icing detail for Saturday.

After class Saturday, I made the royal icing and outlined the logo in white and did the lettering on the side of the cake in orange. The hardest part about making this cake was carrying it. After a week of class that had already left my arms dead, I had to carry this cake, which weighed about 20 pounds, from Hoboken to Brooklyn (albeit via subway). Jeremy was really surprised and seemed impressed though, so it was totally worth the shaky arms. I wish I had taken a better pic...the only one I remembered to snap was with my iPhone.

Finally - a Cookie Success!

The first time I attempted to make iced sugar cookies, it was a total disaster. I quickly got frustrated and abandoned the whole project. I've been admiring these beautiful sugar cookies on blogs like My Sweet and Saucy and A Dozen Eggs, and mine looked like a preschool arts & crafts project.

Bit of a flooding issue

That was over the summer. Cookies have always been a challenge for me, and with this holiday season, I've been determined to produce beautiful and great tasting cookies. After trying countless chocolate chip cookie recipes (and forcing the results on my coworkers), I've finally found a recipe that produces my idea of the perfect chocolate chip cookie - soft, chewy and thick.

Christmas Trees

After I worked out that battle, the next challenge was to revisit the sugar cookies. I decided to go into it with a plan, drawing out each of the 3 cookie designs I wanted to make, and accepted that it was going to be a very time-consuming project that required a lot of patience. Overall, it went pretty smoothly. Except when on my first batch, the gingerbread people, the brown royal icing flooded out of the top of my pastry bag, all over my counter and floor. Two gingerbread men were lost in the process...

Pretty snowflake

Aside from that initial hiccup, the rest, although really time-consuming, came out really nice. I plan on serving these cookies for my holiday party I'm hosting on Friday, and I think I'm going to make a second batch when I go home for Christmas.

I took these pictures with my iPhone, so while the quality is great for a phone camera, overall it is a bit lacking. Have I mentioned how much I love my new phone my brother gave me for my birthday? I downloaded the Epicurious app and browse recipes on the bus ride home from work - it's really perfect.